One view says a clinic needs an agency to appear on Google Maps. The opposite view says it is only a form to fill in. Neither is a safe starting point for a London physiotherapy practice. The answer depends on how much of the work needs a clinician’s judgement, how much needs technical practice, and who will actually do it every week.
This article cites no prices, because no quotes were collected for it; ask any agency for an itemised proposal and compare it with the staff time you would spend. For the wider audit, see our complete guide on auditing a Google Business Profile in London. For the review side, see our complete guide on spotting, reporting and answering fake reviews in the UK.
What you would actually be handing over
Google says local results rely on relevance, distance and prominence and does not publish the weight of each, so nobody can promise a position, whether in the clinic or at an agency. The real choice is who does the work, which falls into three kinds.
- Work only the clinic can do: confirm the hours and services, approve wording about treatments, and decide how to answer a patient review without breaching confidentiality.
- Routine work a trained person can do: weekly checks, photos, posts and a steady request for reviews sent to every patient in the same way.
- Technical work that benefits from practice: merging duplicates, choosing categories, recovering a suspended profile and reading a heatmap.
London details that need a human
A clinic near a Tube or rail station should say so in the description, so that patients can plan the journey. A practice inside a health club or a shared medical building needs the floor and entrance in the address lines, as the pin alone can lead patients to the wrong door. A mobile physiotherapist who treats patients at home runs as a service-area business, with the boroughs covered listed and the home address hidden. Evening and weekend sessions, and bank holiday hours, belong in the profile before they happen. Someone who knows the practice has to supply these facts, whichever route you choose.
Where in-house work tends to break down
Nobody owns the weekly check
If the task belongs to everyone, it belongs to no one. Hours drift, an old number stays live and a review sits unanswered for weeks. A named person with a fixed slot solves this; if you cannot name one, that is your first signal.
A problem outgrows the team
A duplicate listing from a former tenant, a suspended profile or a category mix-up can need diagnosis that a front desk does not do daily. At that point, paying for help with the one-off repair may cost less than weeks of trial and error.
The clinic grows to several sites
Each location has its own profile, hours and reviews. Keeping them consistent by hand becomes hard once the number of sites grows, and a shared record of who owns what becomes necessary.
Where an agency arrangement tends to disappoint
Replies written by someone who has never met the patient
Review replies in healthcare need care. An agency can draft them, but the clinic should approve each one, keep it general, leave out treatment details and avoid confirming that the reviewer is a patient.
Access held by the agency
If the agency owns the profile, ending the contract can mean losing the reviews and photos. The clinic should be the owner, with the agency added as a manager.
Reports that list activity but not outcomes
A monthly report should show what changed on the profile and what was measured, not only a count of tasks. Ask for a sample before signing.
Which route fits which clinic
- A single practitioner with a fixed weekly slot and a clean profile: in-house, with a simple way to measure progress.
- A clinic with a front desk team but no technical confidence: a short agency engagement for the audit and repair, then in-house upkeep.
- A group of clinics, or an agency-managed portfolio: a central dashboard and a written process matter more than the in-house or agency label.
- A mobile practice covering several boroughs: whoever manages it must understand service areas, because service-area settings are easy to get wrong.
Have wording about treatments checked against Health and Care Professions Council standards, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy guidance and the advertising rules published by the Committees of Advertising Practice. This article does not say what they permit, and the check applies to the clinic and the agency alike.
Questions before you sign, and tools to keep score
- Will the clinic be the owner of the profile from day one?
- Who writes and who approves review replies?
- Which specific actions will be taken each month, and how will they be reported?
- What happens to access when the contract ends?
- Does the agency refuse to promise a ranking or supply reviews?
In-house, LocalEdge Lite is free and gives a GBP Score from 0 to 100 on more than 15 criteria, with no heatmap, plus review reply drafts written by AVI that you read and edit before anything is sent. Guardian, an optional add-on, checks the profile through Google’s official API every hour and sends an alert within the hour showing the field, the old value and the new one, with a Fix Now button. LocalEdge Solo adds heatmap scans for up to five keywords on a grid of up to 21 by 21 points.
Agencies and multi-site groups can use a dashboard for tracking several clinics, PDF reports in the agency’s own colours and logo, and scheduled heatmap scans for each client.
Your next step is to run the free LocalEdge Lite check and write down the starting score before you ask anyone for a proposal. Lite is free and needs no card.
